By Simon Shepherd
Auckland City Council is investigating a skimming operation in which thieves used a pay machine at one of its car parks to grab the credit card details of thousands of customers.
While personal details have been targeted in the same way as ATMs, it is believed to be the first time parking machines have been used.
Credit card facilities have been disabled after Westpac bank noticed irregular transactions at the downtown carpark.
Andrew McKenzie from the Auckland City Council says the problems started in early October.
“I don’t have the details, but that is when the bank came to us and said ‘we have a potential risk’ and we started an investigation.”
The council does not know how many cards were read or how much has been taken, but the downtown car park alone handles 10,000 transactions a week.
But it says other credit facilities, like pay and display machines, are still safe.
Now affected card holders from all banks are being told that their card has been compromised.
Ben Gracewood, a Bank Direct customer says he has had reservations about the parking machines.
“I do wonder, especially with those machines the way there is no request for a pin number and it gets charged. But I haven’t had any issues to date, so you just trust them I guess.”
Another affected card holder, IT security expert Daniel Ayers, says the fraudsters either hacked in, generated card numbers from receipts or skimmed the machines.
“It's a fairly brave thief to be putting skimming devices on machines in a council car park. There’s cameras around the place and in the middle of the city.”
But it is very possible that skimming devices were used.
When 3 News asked BNZ about its card holders, it said:
"We were made aware of the skimming incident four weeks ago. This is the first skimming event of its kind to be seen in New Zealand."
That is because skimmers usually target ATM machines.
Now it is up to the council’s bank, Westpac, and the police to find out who the skimmers are and how much they have taken.
The good news for cardholders is if you did swipe your credit card through these machines, as long as you did not violate the terms and conditions, like revealing your pin number, then the bank will foot the fraudsters' bill.
3 News